Battery bounty: saving students money

This innovative project is demonstrating how a solar + battery project can work for both the student tenants and the managing co-op in a low-income apartment complex in Sydney. Robyn Deed talks to the project managers.

GETTING buy-in from all the apartment owners on a solar project in a new apartment building can be hard, but make that a solar + battery project for an existing heritage building used for low-income student housing, and an extra level of energy and commitment is required. But the residents and researchers behind the Stucco Co-operative Housing project in Sydney’s inner-west have achieved just that with a 30 kW solar + 42 kWh Enphase battery installation designed to reduce the 40 student residents’ energy bills and provide a roadmap for other such projects.

Why is solar so tricky for apartments? “The main issue is the ‘split incentive’,” says Bjorn Sturmberg, a former resident of Stucco and one of the project managers. If the apartment owner isn’t the tenant, there’s little incentive for them to pay to install solar when the savings will go to the tenant.

How to get solar onto more apartment buildings is an issue the City of Sydney is currently grappling with, so Stucco “hit the bullseye” says Bjorn, when they put in an application for funding to find an approach that would work for the complex of eight units—with the opportunity to research a significant battery storage installation also in their favour. The result was a grant of $80,000 matched with $50,000 from the Stucco co-op. For City of Sydney, the ‘return’ on their grant is a report on just what the barriers are and guidance on how to overcome them.